


Numbers

by standinginanicedress



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Human Derek, M/M, Magic Stiles, also a bunny, many a card trick tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4802063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standinginanicedress/pseuds/standinginanicedress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I'm <em>magic</em>,” Stiles raises his hands in the air and puts on a serious facial expression. “I have the sixth sense.” </p><p>“The sixth sense, huh? Is that what they're calling <em>bullshit</em> these days?” </p><p>Stiles' lips purse down hard, but he still smirks. Derek wonders if there's any single facial expression that Stiles can make that isn't in some way at least slightly amused, whether at himself or the expense of others. “Non-believers aren't welcome at my table, Derek.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Numbers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vepar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vepar/gifts).



> okay so my life's breath is "weirdo bizarre Stiles that makes Derek ??? but also !!!" and that's pretty much all this fic is (like about 6 of my other fics lmao I'm sensing a pattern)

“Is he out there _again_?” 

Derek lifts his eyes from his wallet, pinching a five dollar bill between his thumb and index finger, before meeting the Erica's. She's squinting out past Derek's head and the line forming behind him, her cherry red lips pursed in either annoyance or disbelief. Following her eye line as he hands her his money, he turns his head to see – well. A pretty familiar sight, actually.

He's been coming to the exact same bakery every afternoon on his lunch break for a coffee or a panini or whatever the hell he feels like on any given day for probably the past four or five months. And every single afternoon, one thirty on the dot, Derek rounds the corner around the block, and sees the same exact thing in any given number of variations. The purple and green awning of the bakery, the large maple tree situated right above a bench, a small gathering of people milling around in metal chairs eating muffins off of tiny pink plates. That all stays the same, most every single day. Chairs all in their place, awning ruffling a bit in the wind, and chatter. 

The _variation_ of all of this comes from a specific individual. He's become as much of a fixture outside the bakery as the chair sets and tiny yapping dogs leashed to the legs of the tables, so much a part of Derek's daily routine that he almost blends into the surroundings as though he's camouflaged himself in purple and green to match the decor. _Almost_ being the operative word there, because he tends to be a little bit hard to miss. 

Sometimes Derek comes around and catches sight of him shuffling cards around in his hands, so quick and precise it almost looks like he must have come out of the womb with a tiny little deck in his hand, grinning from ear to ear at a teenage girl who giggles and titters to her friends. Sometimes he's juggling oranges that he pulls out from inside of his collar, or holding a rabbit out with a comically confused facial expression before saying _hey, this isn't my wallet!!_ , or waving a handkerchief around until it turns into a dove. 

Derek has seen the dove trick upwards of a hundred times by now, has heard the smattering of applause, watched the kid bow and collect dollar bills in his baseball hat, but he's never once actually spoken to him. Like Derek said – he's a part of the scenery. A particularly interesting part of the scenery, about a thousand times more fascinating to observe than any of the trees or buildings, but a fixture nonetheless. Any time Derek has come around to find the street performer absent, it's hard to say that he doesn't feel just a little disappointed. Not that he cares much for slight of hand or pulling animals out of orifices, but it's...routine. 

Expected. Albeit a little annoying, especially when there's a large group of kids gathered around him all screaming about _encore_ , but all the same. Coffee goes hand in hand with card tricks, these days. 

“I still haven't decided if he's good for business or not,” Erica continues as she pops open the cash register, flicking her eyes between the money and the kid outside again and again. “He's never even come inside. I mean – using our sidewalk, but he can't be bothered to patron the business he's exploiting?” 

Derek gives the magician another look. He's standing out there in a graphic t-shirt with his hat on backwards, squeezing tiny sponges shaped like rabbits in his hand – each time he opens his hand up again, a dozen more sponges come flying out of his hand than he started with. By the time he's done, Derek imagines there'll be close to fifty tiny little sponges scattered across the sidewalk that he'll have to navigate through to head back to work. 

Case in point, he's a little innocuous. Ridiculous, yes, but harmless. Derek can't imagine him _exploiting_ anyone for anything. 

“I once found a dead dove in our dumpster, you know,” she hands Derek his change and raises her eyebrows, looking at him like he should be outraged by this information. “Where do you suppose that came from?” 

Derek's lips quirk, just slightly, in spite of himself. It's just so fucking _stupid_. 

“One of these days, I should shoo him off with a broom.” 

Derek imagines that kid waving his hand around to turn the handle of the broom into a long string of tied together handkerchiefs, the screech of indignation from the unimpressed barista.

Yeah. Derek guesses he might be a bit of a nuisance. It's hard not to find it all a little bit funny, though. 

He takes his coffee and meanders his way out the door through the mid afternoon rush – unlike his prediction, the sponge bunnies have been swiped off the sidewalk and most likely are sitting in a wad in the magician's pocket. The kid himself is standing there preoccupied with something in his hand, and Derek doesn't pay him any mind. Most days, Derek doesn't spare him more than a passing glance, an assessment of lanky limbs and attractive beauty marks, and today isn't any different. 

Derek is just turning away to start back to work, when the routine shifts. 

“Hey,” a smooth voice says from behind him. Derek turns his neck, and finds cool brown eyes staring at him paired with a lazy grin. Up close, staring at him head on underneath the shade of the maple, he looks particularly bizarre – raggedy jeans, faded shirt, backwards hat, and a deck of cards in his hand. There's a bunny rabbit sitting at his feet, bizarrely staying put instead of hopping away to freedom, and he's wearing a tiny bow tie around his neck. 

Derek doesn't know if _this_ look is more ridiculous than a black cape and a top hat. 

“Wanna see a trick?” 

Of all the times that the two of them have walked past each other, made brief eye contact, (and on one memorable occasion, the time his prop dove flew straight at Derek's face), they've never uttered a word to one another. Derek's never wanted to stop and watch him do anything, never wanted to have a conversation with what has to be a college kid paying off loans with crumpled up single dollar bills, and, most likely, the kid assumed all of this himself. So, brief eye contact, barely any acknowledgment of the others' existence. 

Case in point, Derek is pretty surprised – enough so that he stops dead in his tracks. (And, admittedly, maybe a little bit excited. Something about having this person's eyes directly on him, focusing entirely on Derek's button down and black slacks combo, is a lot like being noticed by a celebrity, for some reason.) He stands there, curling and uncurling his fingers around his weathered old deck of cards, cocking his head to the side. 

“Uh -” Derek starts, brilliantly. “I actually -”

“Just one,” he takes a step closer, his pet bunny taking a few hops himself, close enough that Derek can actually read the ridiculous name tag he has stuck to his shirt ( _Stiles_ , it says, the I dotted with a star). “It's free!” 

What he means by that is, it's _optionally_ free. The number of times Derek has watched someone walk away after getting a free rose or a double sided quarter without giving this kid – Stiles – even a dime, and consequently listened to him muttering under his breath about _not like I'm a starving artist or anything_ must be astronomical at this point. 

“I'm good with the cards,” he continues on, shuffling them about in his hands, ignoring the hesitation and disinterest written all over Derek's face, the fact that Derek is taking one step away from him in a preemptive flee. “Me and the cards – I don't know, man. It's like having fifty two other fingers. We're _one_.” 

Christ. Derek takes another step back, opening his mouth to say _I'll be late if I don't_..., but Stiles has got the cards shuffled and held out in his direction in a neat line. He raises his eyebrows, smirks, and says, “pick a card.” 

Apparently, this is happening. He's been roped in, the same exact way he got roped into one of those kiosks at the mall, with the hand washing and the fifty minute speech about exfoliation and follicles and whatever the hell. He's a part of this now. 

With a deep sigh through his nose, he reaches out and plucks one of Stiles' cards, much to his obvious delight. He beams, and as though he honestly thinks that Dereks' never seen this fucking done before, as if this isn't the literal oldest trick in the book, he hollers, “don't tell me! Don't show me!” 

Derek purses his lips at the queen of diamonds in his hand, says nothing. 

“Okay. Slide her back in, just stick it right back in here,” he holds the cards out again, and Derek stuffs his own back among the rest. With a light laugh, Stiles shoves them back down into a thick stack, and then the shuffling starts. Derek's watched him shuffle cards so many times by now that it's almost like watching him walk, the sound of the cards slapping against one another as much a part of this person's personality as his own voice is. All the same, it's hard not to stare as those long fingers work along the thick paper; in a way, it's almost mesmerizing. 

Finally, he lays them flat back into a pile, makes direct eye contact with Derek as he blows hotly on the top, flicks his fingers a few times. “I'm sensing...”

Derek blinks at him. 

“...I think I've got it...”

Derek looks at the time on his phone. 

Finally, Stiles claps his entire hand on top of the deck, pulls a card out from somewhere near the middle, and holds it up triumphantly in the air. “Is this your card?” 

Derek actually has a moment of complete and utter disbelief. Like he's said, he's seen this kid do magic tricks so many fucking times it's old hat, he's watched him do so many silly little tricks, seemingly without any effort on his part, that it's all sort of lost its glimmer and spark – the trick itself isn't what has him so surprised.

What's got him so fucking surprised is that – no. That is not his card. Not even close. With his jaw hanging open, Derek stares at the nine of hearts, blinking again and again. Never, never once, has he ever seen Stiles be wrong before. It almost physically pains him to clear his throat, shuffle his feet nervously, and say, “that's not it.” 

Stiles' face falls into exaggerated disappointment, and he snaps his fingers. “Damn,” he says. “Whoops.” 

_This is awkward_ , Derek thinks, watching Stiles drop the nine back down on top of the pile before beginning to shuffle them again. The absolute last thing that Derek wants is to have Stiles go _no,no, hang on, I can do it_ , because it might be that he's having an off day, and Derek doesn't want to be the guinea pig that has to suffer through trial and error until Stiles gets the juice back in his fingers. 

After a moment, Stiles grins again, shrugging his shoulders. He doesn't offer another card out to Derek, luckily. He just smiles and winks. “I'll get you next time.”

**

Next time, Derek basically tries to avoid Stiles at all costs. There's no way, not even if Hell froze over, that Derek could go without his afternoon caffeine boost, so not going to the bakery simply isn't an option, and it's not like there's another place within walking distance (except for McDonald's but – the McCafe? Really?) So, his game plan pretty much boils down to keeping his head lowered while he stares intently at his phone as if there's something fascinating happening there aside from the time while he walks past Stiles.

When Derek came around the corner, Stiles was reaching behind some little girl's ear – presumably to pull a flower out from somewhere among the curls – and Derek could only hope that he'd be too busy doing that to make good on his promise of getting Derek next time. 

It's not that Derek dislikes him, like Erica very obviously does. It's just that, for some reason, the idea of having those eyes on him again, having to watch Stiles' fingers work up close and personal over the deck of cards...

It kind of freaks Derek out. In a really simple way, too. Not the anxiety of running into a person he wants nothing to do with, but more like the anxiety of having to give a presentation at work. The nervous sweat that collects along the palms of his hands when he thinks about having to stand up in front of people, coupled with the drive to impress someone. _That_ kind of nervous. 

Diving into the psychology of why a street performer he'd barely given a passing glance to is now all of the sudden making Derek literally fucking _sweat_ isn't something he has any time for. Because, right before Derek is about to be home free inside the bakery, he steps on something. 

Not something, actually, but _someone_. 

He nearly crushes Stiles' white bunny underneath his foot, and goes reeling backwards the second he realizes what he's about to do, almost knocking over a table on his way back. Resident grump Derek might be to his office mates, but killing bunnies isn't exactly something he's ever felt the need or desire to do. So, down he goes, catching himself at the last second with a hand braced back on an empty metal table, while the bunny just sits there scrunching its nose and acting like nothing just happened. 

“Fuck,” Derek mutters to himself, under his breath, before rising back up to his full height. Stiles appears in his line of sight, scratching absentmindedly at one of his eyebrows with a single playing card (there's a bright orange kitten printed on the back), and smiles. 

“Whoops,” he says as he leans down to scoop the bunny up. As he cradles it in one arm, he turns to give Derek another one of his smiles – Derek is starting to realize that he has a whole slew of them, doling them out differently depending on the situation. “He must've sneaked away at some point.” 

Swallowing, Derek's palms start to go damp. “Sorry,” he says. What else is he supposed to say? “I didn't mean to – step on your pet.” 

Stiles leers at him. _Leers_. “Hops isn't a pet.” This is said very matter of factly, in spite of the fact that Stiles is literally petting the thing right now with two fingers. “Hops is my business partner.” 

Baffled, and a little awestruck, Derek can only ask, “you named your bunny _Hops_?” 

“I was a very uncreative thirteen year old,” Stiles leans forward slightly as he says this in a lower tone of voice, as though he's letting Derek in on a little secret. “The name seems sort of cruel, now, actually. He's gotten fucking _old_ , and he can't go more than a foot or two before needing a break.” 

Christ, Derek thinks. He nearly fucking killed a street magician's decrepit, ancient business partner bunny that can barely even hop anymore. For some reason, this detail is what has his cheeks coloring slightly in shame, ducking his head down so he doesn't have to make eye contact. 

“You're not the first person to step on him,” Stiles says this like a promise, pretty seriously. But when Derek looks up at his face, again, he finds another smile, there. This one a little knowing, or – sarcastic. 

Again, all Derek can think to say is, “sorry about that.” 

“Really not a problem.” He bends down and gently sets Hops back on the concrete, and Derek expects the thing to meander a ways away – but he stays perched right there at Stiles' foot, nosing at the laces of his shoe. “But if you're really feeling bad about it, I think I have a way you can make it up to me.” 

Before Derek can protest, the single kitten card that Stiles had in his hand at the start of this altercation is suddenly an entire deck – and the shuffling begins again. Half in a fugue state, Derek watches the myriad of cats flash past his eyes (calico, white fluffy things, black short hairs), his mouth open like he's about to say something (actually I've gotta get my coffee, uh??), but nothing comes out. Once more, he's _in_ this. 

Stiles has a bizarre ability of lassoing people into his clutches without even hardly having to try. That's probably why he's been so successful doing what can't be a very high paying job for any other person. 

Halfway through the shuffling, Stiles looks up from his work. “What'd you say your name was?” 

“I never told you my name.” 

“Right.” Shuffle. Shuffle. “You're not gonna tell me?” 

“Well -”

“Oh, _I get it_ ,” Stiles grins. “You want me to try and guess.” 

“I don't -”

“What year were you born?” 

“1991.” The number is out of his mouth before he really thinks about it, sort of a knee jerk thing. Derek blinks at him, and then the cards are held out for him to choose. “Are we doing the card trick or are you guessing my name?” It seems like a reasonable question. 

But, Stiles just cocks his head to the side and smirks at him as if it's the single stupidest thing he's ever been asked in his life. “I can do both at once. Like driving and talking on the phone.” 

“You're not supposed to do that.” 

“Uh, okay, Officer Derek.” 

Derek is just about to open his mouth and say _it's really dangerous to do that_ and _the tickets for that shit are so expensive_ and _do you not value your own life_ – when what Stiles actually just said registers in his brain. He had said _Derek_ , the name rolling off of his tongue so casually and easily, as though he's said it upwards of a hundred times, that Derek nearly missed it. 

For a second, it's silent between them. Stiles holding the cards out with a smile, Derek staring back at him with a slack jaw. “How the fuck -”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “I told you. Pick a card,” he thrusts his hands out gently. “It's my specialty.” 

Derek is starting to suspect very strongly that Stiles' _specialty_ just might be _fucking with people_. All the same, even though he's at least moderately freaked out, he reaches out and selects a tabby, bringing it up to his face to examine.

Just like last time, Stiles shouts, “don't tell me!” in the background while Derek slides his eyes along the king of spades. 

As he stuffs the card back into its place among the rest, Derek asks, “doesn't it sort of negate the entire purpose of the trick if all the cards have different backs? You know I picked a tabby cat.” 

“Sure,” Stiles agrees with a nod as he flips the cards around in his hands. He holds a single finger up in the air, before pointing to his temple and saying, “watch, though.” 

He closes his eyes, and does the same shuffling routine he always does. He's got this smug smile on his face as he does it, as though he knows how fucking cool it is to watch someone move their fingers like that, handle something that attention consuming in his hands without even having to look at it. Derek takes this moment to look at Stiles' face more closely – the beauty marks, the pale skin, the upturned nose – and he suddenly thinks...

 _Oh. He's attractive_. Sort of like finally figuring out the very last problem on a math test that he'd left blank the first time around. Just – oh. Of course he is. 

Derek doesn't get the opportunity to marinate any longer on this very enticing thought, because Stiles thrusts a card into Derek's face, eyes still closed. “Is this your card?” 

Four of hearts. “Uh -”

Stiles slowly opens his eyes back up into a squint. He stares at the back of the card, and it must not be a tabby, because he gets that same frown from yesterday on his face. “Damn,” he says, pulling the card away and dropping it back into the deck. “Whoops.” 

For a moment, Derek rubs his jaw. Being wrong once is fine; but there's no way that Stiles can be wrong twice in a row, in the span of two fucking days, and manage to make any money out here. And not only that, but like Derek has said – he's seen Stiles a lot. He's seen Stiles do this exact card trick with no fucking issues so many times. 

Now, all of the sudden, he can't do it? 

“I'll get you next time,” Stiles promises with a wink. And then he's bending down, collecting Hops, and walking down the sidewalk without another word. 

Inside the bakery, Derek leans over the counter and asks, “has Stiles -”

“Who?” The barista asks irritably, wiping chocolate sauce off her hand and scowling. 

“The magician.” 

Her eyebrows curve down in distaste. 

“Has he ever come in here, before? And uh -” he leans over even more slightly, lowering his voice. This is mildly embarrassing. But he has to fucking know this. “...asked you for my name?” 

Erica raises her nose into the air. “He's never come in here period. Not while I've been working – and, by the way, I've asked everyone else too. He has literally never set foot in here. I swear I'm going to chase him away one of these days, I really am, because -”

Derek has already tuned her out for the most part, barely listening to her rant about ethics and dead doves and the cops, because all the information he wanted he already got. 

How the _fuck_ did Stiles guess his _name_?

**

When Derek strolls up to the bakery the next day, he finds Stiles camped out at one of the tables, sunglasses perched on his nose, hat on backwards, holding a palm full of hay in his hands for Hops to nibble at.

This time, unlike yesterday, Derek doesn't try to avoid him. He had spent an inordinate amount of time last night lying awake in his bed, glaring at the ceiling, trying to figure out _how_. How Stiles could have possibly just guessed his name like that, without any other information aside from his birth year. How that tid bit of information was anywhere even close to relevant, Derek couldn't even begin to imagine. 

He went through the list. If Stiles has never even been inside the bakery, there's no way he hassled the name out of one of the baristas who have all started scrawling his name across a sixteen ounce cup the second he walks inside. And – honestly – there's no other place that Stiles could have posibly heard it. He's never seen Stiles mingling around outside his office building, and he can't imagine Stiles has very much business waltzing into the development offices to inquire what new housing they've got coming out, so...how. _How_. 

It's embarrassing how much thought Derek has put into this. At this point, that _embarrassment_ has decided to morph itself into something more akin to _anger_. 

That being said, Derek all but stomps up to where Stiles is sitting, and accosts him. 

“You're not a mind reader,” he opens with. He looks up, briefly, and catches sight of Erica leering through the large window behind Stiles' head at them, frowning intensely with her arms crossed. She's having a fantasy about murdering Stiles with her bare hands, Derek can tell. 

Stiles looks up at him through the black lenses of his glasses, and grins. “That's a tall accusation to make.” 

_Accusation_? “People can't read minds.” 

“I have the sixth -”

“You have an inside source.” Before he knows what he's doing, he's slamming his body into the chair opposite Stiles, leaning his elbow on top of the table, and glaring. 

Stiles pats the head of his bunny, and shoves his glasses up on top of his head. He squints against the sun for a moment, but once he's got them adjusted to the glare, they turn wide in what Derek would call excitement. He's getting some kind of sick thrill out of this, Derek is sure of it. 

“There's no way, _no way_ , you can just guess people's names like that. Especially not when you can't even get a card trick right.” Derek pauses for a second, rubs his jaw. “Not to deal below the belt.” 

“It's fair,” Stiles snickers, like he's in on some little joke that Derek can't even guess at yet. “Though, I'm offended that you seem to think I'd have to stalk you just to find out what your name is.” 

“How else would you explain it?” Derek raises his chin in the air a bit, narrowing his eyes. “You're not about to try and convince me you can actually read someone's fucking mind, Stiles.” 

Stiles' eyebrows raise for a fraction of a second, before he looks down at his shirt as if remembeing his own name tag. Derek wonders when he started doing that, and why. “Nobody said anything about reading minds. I'm just – you know. Gifted.” 

“Yeah. Fucking. Right.” 

“All right,” Stiles says, leaning forward a little bit in his chair like challenge accepted. “Family, then.” 

Derek's face remains blank and impassive. Stiles studies it carefully, clearly trying to keep his face void of emotion like Derek's, but his lips keep twitching at the corners. He's having fun. 

“You've got two sisters.” 

Derek feels like punching him. Or, grabbing him by his face and kissing the smirk right off of it. “ _How_ did you -”

“Your mouth,” a long finger reaches out and pokes just barely at the corner of Derek's lips. “It curved just slightly downward to the side, which indicated to me that -”

“Oh, fuck you. There's no way you could have guessed -”

“I'm _magic_ ,” Stiles raises his hands in the air and puts on a serious facial expression. It might've actually managed to be ominous, if Hops weren't sitting in his lap eating sprigs of hay. “I have the sixth sense.” 

“The sixth sense, huh? Is that what they're calling _bullshit_ these days?” 

Stiles lips purse down hard, but he still smirks. Derek wonders if there's any single facial expression that Stiles can make that isn't in some way at least slightly amused, whether at himself or the expense of others. “Non-believers aren't welcome at my table, Derek.” 

“These tables,” Derek rises back into a stand, tapping his fist solidly onto the metal. “Are for paying customers. And if you,” he points into Stiles' face, and Stiles grins widely at the finger with crossed eyes, “don't get up and take your bunny with you, Erica is going to come out here and beat you to death with a broom.” 

“Erica.” Stiles repeats tonelessly. 

“Yeah. _Erica_. What? You can't use the force,” Derek waves his hands in the air briefly, a bizarre mixture of jazz hands and the middle finger, “to guess who she is?” 

Again, Stiles leans forward, his eyes glistening with the challenge, and snaps, “barista. Blonde hair. Smokes menthols.” 

Derek refuses to be impressed. He absolutely _fucking_ refuses to. “As if you couldn't have gotten that information from lurking around behind the dumpsters like you apparently do.” 

“I've never lurked anywhere.” Stiles looks like he's enjoying this. Every second of it. He's leaning back in his chair, casual as all get out, and his cards have appeared in his hands – shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, while Hops, oblivious, nibbles on his food. This conversation to Stiles must be nothing short of amusing, but Derek is starting to get...annoyed. Aroused. The two just seem to go hand in hand where Stiles is concerned.

“I need to get my coffee, now.” 

“Ah-ah,” Stiles chides, surging forwards with his cards already fanned out. “Pick one.” 

“I'm not doing this again.”

“Come on. Pick a card, any card.” 

It's inevitable. Derek rolls his eyes, and rips a card out of the deck as though it's personally offended him. Seven of clubs. Great. 

After the card has been placed back in the deck, and the shuffling, Stiles holds out a nine of hearts and asks the perfunctory _is this your card_? Derek says _no_ , Stiles says _damn_ , and without another word, Derek walks into the bakery, wishing that it was the kind of door he could _slam_.

**

“I get that he's your friend, or whatever the fuck,” Erica hisses to Derek as she dumps two shots of espresso into Derek's cup, “but I am going to fight that kid if he doesn't come in here and buy a _fucking_ panini.”

Derek grimaces. When he walked past Stiles today, he was leaning back against the brick of the building, dropping his stack of cards again and again into the palm of his left hand, grinning from ear to ear at Derek. Waiting, it looked like. 

With all the resolve in the world, Derek thought, _no_ , and walked right into the bakery without sparing him a passing glance. Because – fucking _no_. 

“We are not friends,” he says, glancing over his shoulder to peer through the window. Stiles is still just standing there, shuffling. For a second, he fantasizes about running full speed out there like a charging bull and slapping the cards right out of Stiles' hands, sending them skittering all around the concrete. 

“You were talking to him yesterday,” Erica reminds him impatiently. “And the day before. _And_ the day before.” 

“He can't do a card trick right,” Derek counters, as if this is all the explanation in the world. 

Erica chortles, long and loud. “Ha!” 

“But, I think -” he pauses and pinches his eyes shut for a second, can't believe he's about to fucking say this. “...I think he might be psychic.” 

Erica is pouring steamed milk, now, holding the foam back with a long metal spoon. She glances up at him, jaw open, and then looks back down right before the cup overflows. “He's a hack.” 

_That's what I thought_ , Derek thinks quietly to himself a little bitterly. _But then_...Then what? So, he knew his name. Big whoop. And that he has two sisters. 

Jesus. Should he be worried about this? Is this a dangerous person? 

A second glance out at Stiles finds him leaning down, talking baby talk to his bunny while he tries to wrangle the thing into another one of those tiny little bow ties. 

No, Derek decides resolutely. There is nothing to be worried about where Stiles is concerned. He might as well be wearing a red curly wig and face paint. The kid is a fucking clown. 

“If he were really psychic, he'd have seen me beating his ass somewhere in his near future,” she plops Derek's latte down onto the counter with a firm clack, “and he'd be gone by now. But, there he is. There he _fucking_ is. And he's your friend.”

“He's not my -” 

With a serious look, reminding Derek bizarrely of the kind of glares he used to get from his mother when he was a teenager, Erica puts her hands on her hips and says, “I need you to get rid of him.” 

Derek knows next to nothing about Stiles, doesn't even know his last name, or if Stiles is even his real first name; but he can just perceptively sense that Stiles isn't the type of person who goes down easy. More likely than not, Stiles has been waiting for someone to ask him to leave so he can dig his heels into the concrete and announce _this is a public forum, is it not?_ , smirking all the way through it. 

There's no way, _no way_ , Stiles is going to just collect his bunny and walk away without being a fucking little shit about it. Derek doesn't even need to be psychic to cuss that one out for himself. 

As soon as Derek steps out, Stiles is there, cards already fanned out, and he's grinning. “I sense you're mad at me,” he offers in a somewhat consoling tone of voice. 

Derek sighs, but can't think of anything to say to that. Because, not really? He's not really mad at Stiles, or at least, that's not exactly the word he would use. While Stiles might be fucking infuriating, and annoying, and so disgustingly good looking Derek wants to reach out and run his fingers through his hair, it's kind of hard to really and truly be mad at him. Derek even bets that if Erica stepped out here for ten seconds and actually tried to have a conversation with him, she'd find it pretty difficult too. 

There's just something about him, a certain quality, that's more or less enchanting. It casts a pall over every thing else he does. Like he could punch Derek in the face, and then immediately after fan his cards out and grin and say _wanna see a trick??_ and Derek would have no choice but to huff, wipe the blood off his face, and pull a card out of the stack. 

“It's just magic,” Stiles assures him, pushing the cards closer. 

“It's a trick,” Derek corrects mildly. Stiles nods and smiles, and Derek can tell that to Stiles, he's just humoring Derek. It's all just a fun little joke to him. _Just a trick, yeah, right_ , he's probably thinking to himself behind that fucking smirk. 

All the same, Derek plucks the six of diamonds, and Stiles holds out the two of hearts. 

“Damn,” he says, pushing the card back into his stack. “Whoops.” 

Derek rubs his jaw, raises his eyes to the sky, and says, “Erica wants you to – uh – not be out here anymore.” 

As expected, Stiles' eyebrows raise up into his hair line, but he makes absolutely no moves to leave. He doesn't reach down to pick Hops up off the ground, doesn't put his cards back into his pocket. He just nods his head and smiles, like that comes as absolutely no surprise to him. “Okay.” 

Well, Derek thinks. He fucking tried.

**

“Is this your card?”

“That's a punch card for a pizza place, Stiles.” 

“Whoops,” he examines this with only moderate interest, scanning his eyes over the number of punches - three - placidly before a slow smile spreads across his face.

**

When Derek comes around the corner to find Stiles not hovering around outside the bakery, he gets a thrill of disappointment. Part of him is a little worried that Erica might have actually made good on her promise to “beat his ass” so bad that he had no choice but to flee the scene, but another part of him is sure that he's probably just moved along to another place before the cops get called on him. Most likely, before he came to the bakery all those months ago, he lurked around outside another establishment in a part of the city Derek never goes to.

Naturally, and of course, eventually Stiles would have to move along. He seems the type. Bored with one thing until he gets bored with another. Still, though, it's hard not to be disappointed that Stiles is gone, now. 

Whether it's because he'll be without his incorrect card guess every afternoon, or because he feels like an idiot for never getting up the balls to ask him out, Derek isn't sure. And, truthfully, he's trying not to think about it. Stiles is the type of person you shouldn't get too attached to, or spend too long thinking on. 

Derek's just accepted his fate, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his nice work khakis and huffing out a sigh, when he hears a rustling from down the alley. As he gets closer, it sounds like a raccoon or a squirrel got back there, and is now currently shuffling around in the dumpster, hunting for half eaten paninis and muffins. Once he's walking past it, peering down to see if maybe he should tell Erica that an entire pack of raccoons are making a mess out of her dumpsters, he sees that it's – not raccoons. 

It's Stiles.

All Derek can really see of him are his legs where they dangle over the edge of the dumpster, because the top half of him is fully submerged into the trash piles. Really, the only reason Derek instantly recognizes it as him is because of the shoes, the fake rose sticking out of his back pocket, and the fact that Hops is hovering a couple of feet away, cleaning his whiskers. 

For a moment, Derek thinks, _am I really going to entertain this? Am I really going to willingly participate in this?_ Even then, he knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that yes, fucking of course he is. The first time that Stiles asked him if he wanted to see a trick, Derek was a part of it all anyway. No sense backing out now. 

He moseys down the alley, watching Stiles filter his way through trash bag after trash bag. He throws a banana peel over his shoulder, and Hops noses at it for a second before looking away, disinterested. 

“Stiles?” Derek calls when he's close enough. 

Even though probably anyone else would have the decency to at least look a little bit peeved at having been caught literally fucking digging through trash, Stiles does little more than glance up, grin, and then immediately return back to pawing through the garbage. “Hey.” 

Derek listens to the sound of empty soda cans rattling, paper rustling. Another banana peel goes flopping down to the ground as Stiles makes a noise of disgust, muttering something about _slimy_ under his breath. Derek honestly doesn't know what to do – this is one of the most bizarre fucking things he's ever seen in his life. And he's been watching Stiles do shit for five straight months, now. It takes a lot to top the list. 

“Hey...” Derek starts, approaching warily. He watches out for Hops underfoot, carefully steps over one of the several banana peels. “Are you – are you in trouble?” 

“Huh?” Stiles sounds distracted. He picks up a magazine, completely damaged and ruined by spilled coffee, and scrutinizes the model on the cover before huffing and dropping it back down among the rest. 

Derek scuffs his foot against the concrete, and looks at Hops to avoid having to look directly at Stiles. “I mean – if you're really _that_ hungry...”

Abruptly, Stiles is stopping. He drops whatever trash he just had in his hand down into the dumpster with a clang, maybe an empty glass bottle, and turns to Derek with his jaw dropped. There's silence, silence, the sound of the bean grinder from inside the bakery echoing off the high brick walls of the buildings they're standing in between. 

Stiles has the gall, the nerve, to look at _Derek_ like he's the crazy one, here. “What exactly do you think is happening here?” 

There's a half eaten orange slice stuck to the sleeve of Stiles' shirt, and a plastic spoon that was most likely used to eat something sticky has gripped onto one of Stiles' pant legs. “It looks like you're trying to find something to eat out of the garbage, Stiles.”

With a few hapless kicks of his feet against the side of the dumpster, Stiles climbs down and out. He stumbles back a bit, nearly trips over his own bunny, but rights himself at the last second – right on time to wheel around on Derek with an accusatory glare. “I don't _eat garbage_!” He defends. The fact that Derek has come to know someone who would ever, ever have to defend themselves using those exact words is almost too much for him to handle. “I can't believe you would ever – that you would even _think_ -” he gets this look on his face, like he's just so mad he can't fucking stand it, and before Derek knows what's happening, he's reaching inside his flannel shirt in a move that Derek has seen dozens of time by now, and practically throwing his prop dove directly at Derek's face.

Derek rears back with a caw of indignation, swiping his hand in the air as the dove flutters its wings loudly and right near his ears. By the time it's flying off and away, out of the alley to freedom from Stiles' shirt, Derek is plucking a feather out of his hair, meeting Stiles' intense frown with one of his own. 

“I thought that thing was fake,” Derek snaps. 

“It _was_ ,” Stiles uses his cryptic ominous voice, and Derek literally doesn't even have the time, right now. 

“Oh, fuck you. You didn't turn a plastic dove into a real one.”

“I _also_ wasn't eating _garbage_ -”

“Okay, Jesus Christ. I'm sorry. I was just, you know. Checking on you.” The thought of Stiles being that much of a starving artist, to the point where he's literally so fucking _starving_ he'd eat someone's chocolate chip muffin crumbs, is a little more than disconcerting to Derek.

He gives a shit. Whatever. 

Stiles appraises him for a moment, fingers splayed out on his hips as he keeps that deep frown set into his face. Just a few seconds of a staring contest, like Stiles is trying to decide whether or not he feels like whipping another dove or a mouse out of his shirt and into Derek's general personal space. 

After a little bit too long has passed, he deflates, shoulders slumping like all the anger and annoyance just drains out of him as easy as snapping his fingers. “For your information,” he begins, turning his back on Derek to pick the banana peels he discarded back up from the ground. He throws one peel back into the dumpster, then the next. “Erica the barista took it upon herself to confiscate my bloody finger and throw it in the trash -”

“You weren't doing the bloody finger trick again,” Derek says, even though he knows good and well that Stiles most certainly was. Or, at least, he tried to. 

Last time he did the bloody finger trick (which consists of chopping it off as though it's real, spurting fake blood all over the place, screaming, etcetera etcetera) he only got so far as to whip the knife out of his pocket before he got tackled by a huge man who apparently thought that Stiles was about to try and stab someone. Derek kind of thought Stiles would have learned his lesson. 

“I won't be doing it _anymore_ ,” he all but whines, looking dejectedly into the dumpster. “It's gone. Do you know how much some of these shitty little props cost? Like, the good stuff? Many money, Derek. _Many_.” 

A question that has been bothering Derek for as long as he's known that Stiles has existed is - “do you have another job? Or – do you just live off of tips?” 

With a sly smile, Stiles twists his hat around so it's front facing, and Derek reads the Jimmy John's logo. That...makes sense. Somehow. “So, in a way, I _do_ eat garbage.” 

“Har har. I like Jimmy John's. There's a kid that comes around every Tuesday who -"

“Isn't it getting a bit late?” Stiles inquires, cutting Derek off and glancing at his wrist – even though there's definitely not a watch there. He acts like there is, though, almost comically. Believably, all the same. “Aren't you going to be late getting back to your serious big-man job?” 

As a matter of fact, he is. He says as much, and is just about to turn away to walk back down to the alley to walk through the front door of the bakery like a normal person, but Stiles holds a single finger up to stop him. 

“Hang on,” he says, pulling a deck of cards out of his pocket. 

“Oh, Christ.”

“It's tradition,” Stiles says. He doesn't even bother shuffling it, doesn't ask Derek to pick a card – he just wings the entire set of them at the brick wall as hard as possible, so fifty two cards go scattering all across the ground, fluttering and vanishing into puddles, underneath the dumpster, landing on top of Hops' head. 

Well. Fifty one. 

A single card has planted itself firmly against the brick, as though glued there somehow, even though there's _no way_...

At this point, maybe Derek should just start giving Stiles more credit. When he first met Stiles, the first time he saw him as a matter of fact, he instantly had the kid written off as a goofball, or a hack, or a poor kid using a ninety-nine cent magic trick book he got at Wal Mart. But, pretty fucking evidently, Stiles might actually know a thing or two about – whatever the hell this actually is. Magic no longer sounds like the right term.

 _Mind games_ might be a more apt analysis. 

Derek glares at the two of hearts, shakes his head. “I didn't even pick one.” 

Stiles shrugs, again smirking like there's something Derek just doesn't get. “Don't need you to.”

**

“You don't kill your doves and dump them in the bakery dumpster, do you?”

Stiles rubs his thumb along the corners of his card deck, lifting each back up one by one, most likely just to listen to the slap of cardstock against itself – Derek imagines that having cards in his hands, hearing the sounds they make swiping against each other's backs, shuffling in between each other, falling to the ground; that's gotta be like second nature to Stiles. 

He rears his neck back, before breaking out into a peel of laughter. “The doves are _fake_ , Derek.” To illustrate this, he pulls another plastic white toy out of his pocket. He even squeaks the thing for emphasis, raising his eyebrows. 

“It flew at my face yesterday.” 

Apparently, Stiles has nothing to say to that. He just holds up a four of hearts, cocking his head to the side. At this point, he doesn't even bother asking the question, and Derek doesn't even bother answering it.

**

“Is this not a public forum?” Stiles holds his hands out to the sidewalk in a grand gesture, meaning to encompass everything as far as the eye can see – save for the private businesses and establishments, at least. He's leaning back in one of the metal chairs at the bakery, and apparently has been doing exactly that since ten o'clock in the morning.

When Derek first walked past him on his way inside, Stiles had pointed to the ankle he had propped up on the chair opposite him, announcing, “there was a tomato incident at the Satanwich Shop.” 

“ _Satanwich_?” Derek had said with a smirk. “That's not clever.” 

“Uh, _whatever_.” He probably spent the entire morning brandishing out the same tricks as always, just confined to a chair. 

Now, Stiles is smirking up at a police officer, like he's done the exact same thing at least a dozen times before. In all reality, he probably has. Inside the bakery, when Derek had turned around halfway through his coffee order and seen Stiles swarmed by two officers who looked annoyed that there wasn't something more important they could be attending to, Erica cackled. She had finally gone an fucking done it. “Am I not an American?” 

“Stiles,” the officer groans like he knows Stiles on a pretty personal level. Well enough to know how fucking obnoxious he is and to be unwilling to even _begin_. “Do we have to -” 

“Are there not rights,” he jabs his index finger down onto the table harshly, but his lips quirk up just slightly at the corners. “God-given rights to the citizens of these United States -”

“Can we do this the easy way? For _once_?” 

Stiles turns to where Derek is standing watching this all unfold, caught like a deer in the headlights. He doesn't think they'd actually arrest Stiles – he's technically not done much wrong except loiter – but all the same, he doesn't want to just leave Stiles here when something so dramatic is going on. He gives Derek a facial expression without saying anything to the officer, but Derek can read loud and clear what isn't being said here – _I don't know. Can we_? 

“They don't want you meandering around out here anymore. Either you leave, or I write you a ticket. What's it gonna be?” 

Stiles might not be eating food out of the garbage for survival, but he also isn't buying any of the slightly overpriced wares from the bakery he's spent half his days in front of for the past five months. That alone is evidence enough that Stiles doesn't have the money to be paying fines, not even if he pulled off the greatest street magic show of all time. 

So, although he puts on heirs about the entire thing, it's no surprise whatsoever when Stiles sighs dramatically and collects his bunny from the concrete. “Fine,” he huffs like an indignant child being told he can't have another cookie. “This scene was drying out anyway. Right?” At first, Derek thinks the question is directed at him – upon further inspection, Stiles is talking to Hops. Right. Of course. The business partner. 

The policeman stands back with his hands on his hips, watching as Stiles drifts away down the sidewalk step by step. With little to no complications, at that. Mimicing Derek's own thoughts, he asks, “I thought you said your ankle was twisted?” 

Stiles widens his eyes in mock surprise, and leans down to glare at his ankle in what would quantify as amazement if only Derek couldn't see straight fucking through it. 

Mind games, he reminds himself. Fucking mind games. 

“By God,” Stiles mutters in awe, shaking his head. “It's a miracle.” 

Derek rolls his eyes. At this point, he doesn't even bother wondering if Stiles' ankle was ever twisted, or if he mystically healed himself, or if he was just being dramatic the entire time. What's the point? Apparently, nothing makes Stiles happier than a good _I'm fucking with you_ , so Derek doesn't bother giving him the satisfaction. 

“Oh, by the way,” Stiles snaps his fingers, pauses mid-step, and pulls a card out of his pocket, holding it out for Derek to take. The second it's hanging there in the air between them, Stiles shifts his thumb in just enough of a slide that it becomes evident that it's not just one card, but two. Two of the same, actually – the seven of hearts. 

“Don't only one of each come in a pack?” It's the only thing he can think to say as he accepts the cards. 

Stiles gives him a blank look. “It's almost like you can buy more than one pack a time. Now _that's_ witchcraft.”

**

“Sorry about your boyfriend.” Erica doesn't actually sound very sorry at all, but she gives Derek two extra pumps of vanilla, free of charge. “I couldn't have him digging around in the trash for his discarded toys -”

“You could've just not thrown his things out,” Derek interjects, maybe a little bit too hotly, and Erica smirks at him, with something of an _I know something you don't know_ vibe to her. “And he's not my boyfriend.” 

“Right.” The _uh-huh, sure honey_ , is implied somewhere in the undertones. 

In spite of the fact that it's true. Stiles isn't Derek's boyfriend. He'd say, at most, they were on friendly terms with one another. A bit of a rocky start, and really, what does Derek even really know about Stiles on a personal level other than he works at Jimmy John's and has a pet bunny with a horrible name – but friendly terms nonetheless. 

Derek just thinks it's a bit of a shame that Stiles had to go and get himself shucked away from the one place that their lives ever crossed paths before they really had a chance to...do whatever. Be anything more than the guy who buys coffee from the spot where the magician pulls tricks. It was a long shot either way. 

Still, though. 

“You like him,” Erica says matter-of-factly, sliding Derek's cup across the counter before balancing her chin in the palm of her hand. 

“He's amusing,” Derek offers.

“That's not what I meant,” she sing-songs back to him. “And you know what I meant.” 

Of course Derek knows exactly what she fucking meant. He's known it since the very first time that Stiles managed to corner him, rope him into his ridiculous routine; even guessing his card wrong, again and again and again – even _that_ was, on some level, charming. 

In his head, he imagines those long fingers snapping, the _whoops, damn_ in Stiles' voice. 

“You _do_ like him,” her eyes go wide, even though Derek hasn't said or done anything except maybe curl his lips into a small smile as he sprinkles cinnamon on top of his foam. “I knew it. I knew you'd be exactly the type of guy who'd be into -”

“Erica...”

“-that fucking freak of nature. I'm telling you there's something off about him,” she crosses her arms and ignores the line behind the register, gazing out the window as if Stiles is still there, now, shuffling his cards or dropping sponge bunnies all over the sidewalk. “I suspect -”

“I know.” Derek does know. He most likely suspects the same exact shit that Erica does, because for all his wit and charm, Stiles is suspicious. He digs around in garbage cans and guesses people's names with next to no information to go off of, what _isn't_ suspicious about that? 

“I was going to say that I suspect he really likes you back,” she scrunches her forehead together. “For whatever reason.” 

“You have a line,” Derek points to the confused and somewhat agitated handful of people standing in front of the register who have been listening to this entire exchange, backstepping towards the front door and weaseling his way out of the conversation. 

“Freaks in love!” She calls as Derek pushes open the glass down and ignores the pang of disappointment he feels when Stiles is, of course, not out there anymore. “Consider it!” 

Derek does. He sits at his desk at work and slides the two sevens out from his wallet again and again, runs his fingers over the tiny little grooves in the cards, examines the stains from coffee or pizza sauce or _whatever_ that marks one of them up. As if the thing came from Stiles' oldest and favorite deck, the one he's had since he was just learning how to play Go Fish and could barely pronounce _abracadabra_ without stuttering a few times.

__Something soft pools in Derek's stomach at the thought of Stiles willingly giving away a part of one of his most prized possessions, and giving it directly to Derek without even batting an eyelash._ _

__Stiles is just one of those people who won't be forgotten about. The interactions that he and Derek had together are too strange, too specific, and too – Stiles. Maybe that's really the only word that Derek could boil it all down to; everything else just winds up falling short. Point is, Stiles is _Stiles_ , and Erica was right. _ _

__Derek did like Stiles – _does_ like him. For a little while, now. Derek likes him enough to keep the cards Stiles gave him tucked away in his wallet, right behind the picture he has with his sisters and mother from two Christmases ago. _ _

__And maybe, just maybe, Stiles likes him back. There's only so many ways that Derek can explain away the fact that Stiles always came up to him, or beckoned him over these past couple of weeks. After five months of ignoring each other, giving each other glances while the other wasn't looking, Stiles was the one who was wise enough to make the first move (and really, of fucking course he was) while all Derek did was go with the flow and wait for Stiles to do something else._ _

__Something more solid, and obvious. Not just a trick or a clever twist of his hands, but an actual question or an actual answer, for once. Stiles might like to play games with everyone, but eventually he has to be serious for at least a few seconds, so someone can get a straight answer out of him._ _

__The decision is made pretty easily after that._ _

__If Stiles can't figure out how to make a serious or final proposition, then Derek's just going to have to be the one to do it. Not that he minds much. Stiles is worth a little bit of a chase, no matter how hard he tries to turn it into more of a maze every single time you try and catch him._ _

__When he pulls into the Jimmy John's parking lot later in the same evening, Stiles is just pushing open the door, ripping his hat off his head like it's personally offended him somehow by existing. He smooths his hair down over his head as much as he can, and then gives up and rustles it about into a haphazard mop on top of his head._ _

__He makes his way across the parking lot towards a blue Jeep parked all the way in the far corner near the nail salon, oblivious to the fact that Derek is unbuckling his seatbelt and pushing his door open ( _psychic my ass_ , Derek thinks). _ _

__Derek slams his door closed and follows Stiles at a brisk walk, until he's close enough to call out his name. Stiles turns his head, a surprised look on his face – when he catches sight of Derek making his way towards where he's come to a stop, right next to his Jeep, he grins._ _

__“I bet you thought you'd never see me again,” he says, keeping that same smile on his face. “I would've thought you'd like to keep it that way.”_ _

__“Well,” Derek starts as he slows down to a walk just a few paces away from Stiles, “there are less little kids hanging around since you resigned.”_ _

__“ _Resigned_ ,” Stiles repeats with a laugh. _ _

__“Retired, maybe.”_ _

__“Resigned is better,” he reaches out and pats Derek on the arm like _job well done, you made a joke!_ “I've already set up camp at the park on Maple. I can't believe how much more money I make on an afternoon there than at the bakery.” _ _

__“I can't believe you didn't leave the bakery sooner. It seems obvious you'd make more pretty much anywhere else.”_ _

__Stiles blinks at him, a smile creeping across his face, and then looks away at the same time he ducks his head – it's the first time Derek has ever seen Stiles look genuinely bashful. It's as if Derek just outed some big secret about him in front of the entire world, even though it's only just the two of them standing underneath a streetlight in a near empty parking lot._ _

__Ah. Derek smiles. Erica _was_ right. It's a kind of thrill, actually, to be standing here looking at someone he likes, and likes a lot, enough to chase him down, and to know beyond any shadow of a doubt that that someone likes him right back. Because - “you kept coming to that same place just to see me.” _ _

__Stiles furrows his brow, but not in confusion or anger. More like the face of someone who has been called out and now has no other choice but to face the music. Instead of saying anything, he reaches down into his back pocket, and Derek would bet a million dollars on what he's about to pull out. All of his life savings, everything he owns._ _

__As soon as the cards are out in the open, he's got them fanned out, holding them in Derek's direction with a familiar thrust of his wrists. It's funny how well Derek knows the way that Stiles' limbs move, the exact way he carries himself. “Pick a card.”_ _

__“I don't want to -”_ _

__“Derek,” Stiles interrupts, face splitting into a shit-eating grin. “One more time. Come on.”_ _

__With a sigh that's more fond than anything else, Derek pinches a card in between his fingers and holds it up to inspect. The five of hearts. All right._ _

__“Slide it back in, any place you feel like,” Stile narrates, even as Derek is already doing it without needing to be prompted. Stiles' shuffling feels more perfunctory this time around, less showmanship and more getting right down to it. He doesn't say anything through the ten seconds he spends playing with the cards, but he has a particular set to his eyes. Something slightly more intense than all the other times, as if he's honestly and really trying not to mess this one up._ _

__He drops the cards from one hand to the other, watches them as they stack on top of each other. Once they're all sorted out, he reaches into the center, pulls out a card, and holds it out. “Is this your card?”_ _

__Since it's black, Derek doesn't even read it. “No,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Look. I know you can do card tricks. I know you can do all kinds of tricks. I don't get why you've obviously been purposefully fucking up every single time -”_ _

__“Hang on a second,” Stiles interrupts, one finger in the air. He pulls the card back to inspect it himself, cocking his head to the side and frowning. “I think these two are stuck together.” Without any more preamble, he scratches at the edges of the card, again and again, until revealing that – yes, actually. It's two cards molded into one. He pries the two of them free, tosses the black card aside like it doesn't even matter, and holds the other one out for Derek to look at._ _

__With the single biggest smile that Derek has ever seen on his face (and that's really saying something), Stiles asks, “is _this_ your card?” _ _

__It's the five of hearts, all right. In all its glory, there it is – but that's not all that's on the card. In Stiles' chicken scratch writing, there are a series of other numbers stacked carefully over the five. It takes Derek a full five seconds of staring to understand what he's seeing._ _

__He blinks at it. Once, twice. He looks into Stiles' eyes to find them shining so bright with excitement and _haha, got you!!_ that he nearly thinks about grabbing his face and just -_ _

__“My phone number,” Derek clarifies evenly, voice devoid of any emotion. “That's -”_ _

__It's not just his phone number. It's the exact order of the cards that Stiles pulled – exactly. He remembers vividly that the very first card Stiles got wrong was a 9 – the second a 4 – the third a 9 – and on and on until – 949-22....and the pizza punch card._ _

__The pizza punch card that had exactly three punches in it already. 949-223..._ _

__Mind. Fucking. _Games_._ _

__“Purposefully fucking up,” Stiles parrots, pulling the card back slowly and beaming. “That's one way to put it.”_ _

__“How did -” Derek sputters for a second, still unable to take his hand off the card where it's clutched in Stiles' hand limp down at his side, unable to comprehend, “how did you possibly know my – from the beginning? You've known this _entire_ fucking time?” _ _

__Stiles scratches at his face, looking away with a bit of color in his cheeks. “You know Scott McCall?”_ _

__Scott McCall? “The _sandwich_ kid?” The kid who brings by sandwiches every Tuesday afternoon and knows Derek's order by heart – oh. _ _

___Oh_._ _

__Stiles works at Jimmy John's. Scott McCall delivers sandwiches for Jimmy John's. Scott McCall knows Derek's phone number and name because – because he's _the sandwich kid_. _ _

__“You've been fucking with me,” Derek accuses, pointing a finger in Stiles' face and stepping closer, until they're nearly chest to chest. “This entire time.”_ _

__“Yup,” Stiles' lips pop on the p._ _

__“You're good at card tricks.”_ _

__“It's my specialty,” Stiles clarifies._ _

__“You can't read minds.”_ _

__Stiles hesitates for a second, his lips quirking, and Derek nearly has a seizure._ _

__“It's all just tricks,” Stiles promises, that smile not leaving his face for a second. “I know how to trick people. I never just guessed your name or your phone number or that you had two sisters, but I – tricked you. It was fun, I like to -”_ _

__Derek cuts him off. Grabs him by his chin, and pushes their lips together. Stiles' response is instantaneous; he leans up slightly, presses his fingers against Derek's chest gently, opens his mouth – and then they're just kissing. It's easy, actually, considering all the work Stiles clearly put into getting to this point. Easy and right._ _

__“Did you ever actually twist your ankle?” Derek asks when they pull back, keeping his fingers locked around Stiles' jaw while his thumb strokes against his cheek._ _

__“Oh, yeah,” Stiles says, laughing. “But. I'm magic.”_ _

__“Don't give me that shit,” Derek huffs, narrowing his eyes. “It's just a trick – you said it yourself.”_ _

__“Hmmm...” Stiles mock considers this for a second. “How do you explain the doves, then?”_ _

__Truthfully, Derek can't. Every thing else – the kiss, and the phone number, and Scott, that's all easily explained. That's all within the realm of reason; those were just mind games, like he's said. And mind games he can deal with. He's managed to keep up with Stiles for this long, so he reckons he can keep on going until Stiles feels like cutting him just a little bit of slack._ _

__Some things, though...some things, it would seem, Stiles wants to clutch tight in his palm, a secret that Derek's going to have to work at unraveling._ _

__Just the way Stiles fucking likes it._ _

__"I knew if I did a card trick right you'd just roll your eyes and walk away," Stiles says, leaning in to press another kiss to Derek's lips. "I wanted to - you know."_ _

__"Fuck with me."_ _

__"Exactly." He raises his eyebrows, and this close to his face, Derek can map out the pattern of marks across his cheeks, the flecks in his eyes. "You seemed like you like to play games."_ _

__Derek grins at him, cocking his head just slightly to the side to get a better view of the profile of Stiles' face. "Why do I get the sense a relationship with you would just be one game after another?" One more trick, one more guess, one more riddle - over and over again._ _

__"Is that a dumbass, roundabout way of asking me out?"_ _

__Of course it is. Abso-fuckin-lutely._ _

**Author's Note:**

> and, yeah, the idea is that Stiles is probably at least a little bit ACTUAL magic lmao but ~it is a mystery~


End file.
